"I'll shoot as sure as they come!" he said with passion. "I won't have my niece or August insulted in my house by a parcel of vagabonds."
"O Uncle Andrew! is it a shiveree?" asked Julia.
"Yes."
"Well, don't shoot. It'll be so funny to have a shiveree."
"But it is an insult to you and to August and to me. This is meant especially to be an expression of their feeling toward August as a German, though really their envy of his good fortune has much to do with it. It is a second edition of the riot of last spring, in which Gottlieb came so near to being killed. Now, I mean to do my country service by leaving one or two less of them alive if they come here to-night." For Andrew was full of that destructive energy so characteristic of the Western and Southern people.
"Oh! no, don't shoot. Can't you think of some other way?" pleaded Julia.
"Well, yes, I could get the sheriff to come and bag a few of them."
"And that will make trouble for many years. Let me see. Can't we do this?" And Julia rapidly unfolded to Andrew and Jonas her plan of operations against the enemy.
"Number one!" said Jonas. "They'll fall into that air amby-scade as sure as shootin'. That plan is military and Christian and civilized and human and angelical and tancy-crumptious. It ort to meet the 'proval of the American Fish-hawk with all his pinions and talents. I'll help to execute it, and beat the rascals or lay my bones a-bleachin' on the desert sands of Shady Holler."
"Well," said Andrew to Julia, "I knew, if I took you under my roof, you'd make a Christian of me in spite of myself. And I am a sort of savage, that's a fact."